


please come back, save me from myself

by unearthly



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Anger, Crying, Crying Neil Josten, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fights, Help, Hurt Neil Josten, M/M, Sad with a Happy Ending, Therapy, bee tries her best
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:20:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29580165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unearthly/pseuds/unearthly
Summary: "this is a whole different level of agony Neil was never prepared for and has no clue how to deal with. this is a monster of his own making inside himself and he doesn’t know how to fight his own head, never has, but especially not when a part of him thinks he deserves it this time."
Relationships: Andrew Minyard & Renee Walker, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 2
Kudos: 82





	please come back, save me from myself

**Author's Note:**

> for some reason I decided I wanted to make myself cry at 2 am and this happened.

Neil would be lying if he said he and Andrew didn’t fight or argue often. They fight almost constantly, battling with words and whims and ideas. It’s their thing, in a way. Contrasting opinions and ideas and sometimes even devil’s advocate positions they don’t even believe in for the sake of the battle of wits they can find themselves in that almost always ends in smiles or kisses.

The truth lies in the fact they don’t fight over meaningful things often. Well, that’s not exactly true. They debate gay rights and government every other week. No, they don’t argue about them often.

Sometimes small things that irk one another but after so long living together they’re accepted as the little pitfalls to their partner and almost endearing in their predictability.

Andrew leaves clothes strewn across the floor of their apartment as a kind of claim to his own space he never had. Neil needs the place clean, echoes of needing to be untraceable difficult to break even years later.

Andrew puts forks in the dishwasher tongs up and Neil likes them the opposite way. Andrew leaves hand washed dishes to air dry over a towel, Neil likes to dry them by hand and put them away immediately.

Andrew remarks about the cat’s irritating nature to express his affection for the beasts and Neil says not to say he hates them where the girls can hear him, that Andrew will hurt their feelings.  
They make a playfully chastising comment about the other’s habits at least once a week but there’s never any real heat or anger, just a need to point out that once again, they’ve done something to irritate one another.

They don’t fight about big things because they’re rarely in disagreement about big things.

Neil hates when they fight for real, not for the fight itself, but the aftermath. The yelling and fierce words that can’t be taken back but aren’t often meant is its own kind of awful. But they’re people who hold onto things.

It's at night when they drift off in separate rooms, or in the morning when Andrew curses Sir or King for tripping him and Neil glares instead of giving a joking retort.

It’s like a nuclear bomb, intense in the beginning sure but the lingering effect permeates their space for days after.

It’s never gotten this bad though. The only time it had come close was the day Neil said he wanted to visit Lola in jail, and even then Andrew had understood his point of view enough to not be this angry about it.

Now, they don't even have that small understanding. Instead, Neil is in their apartment in Manhattan and Andrew is downtown staying with Renee after throwing clothes in a bag still amidst Neil’s yelling and then leaving, the slam of the door slamming shut echoing with Neil’s yell of ‘coward’.

Neil doesn’t know how they come back from this to be honest.

They’ve always gravitated towards one another, always been able to push and pull at times but stay close, connected. Neil’s never felt more of a distance from his boyfriend than he does now and, for the first time since his mother stitched his first bullet wound shut, cheap vodka barely numbing him in a gas station bathroom off route 66 Neil wants to cry.

He calls Bee instead, because as little as he trusts her, Andrew does and Neil knows it’s only a matter of time before Andrew calls her.

“Neil?” Bee answers, he can hear the suspicion in her voice, probably prepared for Andrew to tell her he broke his phone again and borrowed Neil’s to work through whatever made him angry enough to chuck the device at a wall. It’s the only reason Neil has her number in his phone.

“Hey Bee,” he says, voice scratchy and only then does he realize how tired he is. It’s been two days since Andrew left and it’s 3 a.m. on the third. He hasn’t slept since, he probably looks like shit. “Did, uh, did Andrew call you?”

“No, he hasn’t lately. Why? Did something happen?” Her concern is horribly veiled and Neil thinks that if this really does destroy them at least he knows Andrew has her.

“We, um, we had a fight. It was, really bad, Bee. He went to stay with Renee, I just … I can’t be with him for this, so um, can you call him, please? I know, maybe it’s not, uh, my place to ask? Anymore,” the word sticks in his throat and he has to clear it to keep speaking. “But just, I need to know that someone is there for him, right now. Cause I can’t be, and,” his voice is shaking and his eyes are blurring against his permission, “I think I hurt him.” He admits quietly.

He’s angry, sure, he was angry then and he still is but he can’t bring himself to really care about the damn fight to be honest because he’s never done this before. He’s never been the one to hurt Andrew or make him feel like his home wasn’t his, whether that means the apartment or Neil he doesn’t know anymore. He’s almost afraid to find out.

“Neil,” Betsy says, voice sad and Neil can hear blankets shifting as he sits up in her bed, a lamp clicking on. “Would you like to talk?” She asks. 

Neil closes his eyes tight, dropping his head and pressing his knuckles against his eyelids until it hurts. Until it aches as bad as his heart in his chest and his lungs and his head and his soul. Until it all pounds in time in a symphony of ache and longing that Neil couldn’t have felt before Andrew and doesn’t know how to deal with now.

“He’s moving teams,” Neil says. “The pay is better, I guess, I don’t know. He said,” Neil exhales, breath shaking, “he said we needed the extra money because half of mine is the Moriyamas.”

The line is quiet, and Neil waits for the inevitable question. He can’t answer it until she asks, can’t handle saying it aloud again without prompting because the last time he said it, he was screaming it at the love of his life loud enough and with enough anger he had to leave Neil. Leave him like everyone should before they get caught in the shrapnel radius of the time bomb that is him.

“Which team?” She asks, and it breaks something in Neil’s chest and stomach so violently he’s sure she can hear it crack through the phone.

“Seattle,” it comes out a sob and Neil should be embarrassed or at least uncomfortable being so vulnerable in front of a woman he’s never trusted but he really just can’t, anymore.

It hurts too much, and too bad all at once to care about anything but the monster of grief and rage and anger and hate and love and fear clawing its way up through his stomach, squeezing his heart and lungs in a vice that makes his chest tight before wrenching his tongue into a sob.

He can’t do this. Can’t do a country of distance between them again, and Andrew should know that. His last year of college being in South Carolina and Andrew in Texas had nearly shattered him, and the one after with Neil is Chicago and Andrew still in Texas hadn’t been better.

All the foxes knew the toll it had taken on the both of them. Neil had panic attacks every other day and he went months without sleeping. This is further and Andrew said yes anyways without even talking to Neil.

Distantly, he thinks he can hear Betsy saying his name but his phone isn’t in his hand anymore so he’s not hearing much of it, just the distant small sound of her through the phone on the floor.

He should’ve let Andrew explain. He should’ve offered to back out of his contract and go with him. He should’ve figured something out instead of collapsing his fear into a neat little box and replacing it with rage and lashing out at Andrew before he could explain it all.

Andrew never did anything without thinking it through, Neil should’ve known better and now Andrew is gone. Neil blew up at him because the prospect of the blonde leaving him for a year terrified him and now he’s lost Andrew forever.

He’s going to be alone again, like Millport in the wake of his mother’s death. Alone and lost and with no clear path forward and with his luck he’ll end up doing something else guaranteed to get him killed.

The foxes worked out pretty well for him but he knows better than to believe he’ll be that lucky ever again. This time he’ll meet a bullet likely from a Moriyama gun and Neil has no doubt he’ll die smiling because a bullet wound doesn’t hurt nearly this bad, he knows, he’s had more than one. He'd endure that happily to be set free from this.

Physical injuries are temporary and on the surface. They’re nerves lighting up and sending signals and if you boil it down to that you can control it, breathe through it and bare it until it lessens.

This is a whole different level of agony Neil was never prepared for and has no clue how to deal with. This is a monster of his own making inside himself and he doesn’t know how to fight his own head, never has, but especially not when a part of him thinks he deserves it this time.

Deserves to hurt how he hurt Andrew.

He doesn’t want to feel this anymore. He wants the ache to cease, wants the pain to ebb, needs something, anything to relieve the pressure inside and all he can think to do is cry.

So he does.

For the first time in years Neil falls apart in a way he’s always thought juvenile and does nothing. It doesn’t help to cry, does ease it at all, doesn’t do anything really but it’s all he has because there’s no Andrew to put a hand on the back of his neck and calm him anymore.

He’s all alone now, in a hell of his own making.

**Author's Note:**

> andrew's pov up next


End file.
